'Northern Taliban' threatens Central Asia
By Sanobar Shermatova
MOSCOW - In the eight years the United States-led coalition has been in action
in Afghanistan, the northern provinces have remained largely calm - until
recently, that is.
Taliban attacks have generally focused on southern Afghanistan, and the
overland routes by which coalition forces brought in fuel and ammunition from
Pakistan. There was never a hint of a Taliban threat to coalition air bases in
Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, or to the airfield in Tajikistan used by the French.
The decision by Central Asian states to allow their territories to be used to
bring in military freight into Afghanistan via the northern route changes
things dramatically. The new supply line carries
with it the risk that the Central Asian region could be dragged into the Afghan
conflict.
This danger was highlighted in stark terms in September, when the Taliban
stepped up their activities in Kunduz province, a region close to Tajikistan
which is controlled by German troops in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) force and which until this year was quiet.
When the Taliban seized two fuel tankers in Kunduz in early September, NATO
responded with an air strike that resulted in a number of civilian deaths,
causing an international crisis. Attacks on German military vehicles have also
been reported in the region.
Afghan officials say Taliban activity in Kunduz has also involved non-Afghan
militants of Central Asian origin. One senior commander, General Mustafa
Patang, told journalists on September 12 that "hundreds" of militants had come
to northern Afghanistan from the tribal areas of Pakistan.
On October 12, President Hamid Karzai confirmed that the Taliban were moving
men to the north - adding that they were using military helicopters to do so.
The bulk of these foreign fighters are assumed to belong to the Islamic
Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which was active in Central Asia in the late
1990s before relocating to Afghanistan and then, after 2001, to lawless parts
of Pakistan. Estimates of their numbers range wildly from a few hundred to
5,000.
These Central Asian militants are not entirely homogenous. One known group
affiliated to the IMU is the Islamic Jihad Union, which has apparent
connections with Turkish and Afghan emigres in Germany. The German police
believe the group was planning to bomb airports, restaurants and cafes, an
American military base and the Uzbek Embassy in that country. The aim was
apparently to prompt Germans to call on their government to withdraw troops
from Afghanistan and from the military base in the Uzbek border town of Termez.
The IMU itself appears to have shifted its priorities from toppling the Uzbek
government to the broader international jihad agenda. In practical terms, its
focus has been fighting the enemy on its doorstep - the Pakistani government.
The military has mounted periodic offensives in the tribal areas, and the IMU
has fought back on the side of the Pakistani Taliban. The IMU was closely
aligned with top militant leader Baitullah Mehsud, who was killed by a rocket
from an unmanned US plane in early August.
For its part, the Pakistani army told civilians in the tribal zone that its
offensive was not directed against the Pashtun population, but against the
foreign militants causing instability in the area.
Incessant Taliban attacks on the overland route from Pakistan through the
Khyber Pass into Afghanistan have brought a halt to coalition convoys carrying
fuel and munitions. Now that the northern route via Central Asia is being used,
it would seem logical from the Taliban's perspective to apply pressure here,
too.
The IMU is an obvious choice for the job - many of its fighters spent time in
northern Afghanistan in the mid-1990s when they were part of the Tajik
opposition guerrilla movement fighting the government in Dushanbe. The ethnic
factor is also important, since this part of Afghanistan is populated by Tajiks
and Uzbeks.
Effectively, there are three front lines for defending Central Asia against a
spillover of the Afghan conflict in the shape of incursions by Taliban-allied
militants. Given the arrival of the latter so close to the border, it did not
come as a complete surprise when there were sightings of them in Tajikistan and
Kyrgyzstan this spring and summer.
The Tajik-Afghan frontier goes through difficult terrain and is porous in
parts, allowing drug traffickers and militants to slip across unnoticed. There
are mountain pathways providing routes through Tajikistan to Kyrgyzstan and
Uzbekistan. The IMU knows the ground well, since its guerrillas used the same
routes in 1999 and 2000 to mount raids on Kyrgyz and Uzbek territory. The fact
that armed groups appeared in roughly the same areas this year - eastern
Tajikistan and southern Kyrgyzstan - suggests that local law-enforcement is
still unable to monitor and intercept suspects using these drug routes.
The second defensive line, therefore, runs along Central Asia's borders with
Afghanistan to reduce opportunities for infiltration. It should be recalled
that both the German base in Termez and the French forces in Tajikistan are
within easy reach of the border.
The third line of defense lies deeper inside Central Asia. Militant groups, for
example in Pakistan and the North Caucasus, are quick to adapt and will rapidly
extend their attacks to new areas so as to disperse the forces arrayed against
them. Weakening the security forces also has the aim of undermining the
governments they support.
There have been several examples in recent months of such targeted attacks in
Uzbekistan. In May, police were targeted in and around the eastern city of
Andijan, while in August the deputy head of the interior ministry's
counter-terrorism department, Colonel Hasan Asadov, was killed.
Two Muslim clerics were attacked around the same time in what seem to have been
related incidents. Abror Abrorov, deputy head of the Kukeldash madrassa (seminary)
in Tashkent was murdered in mid-July, and the capital's chief imam or mosque
leader, Anvar-Qori Tursunov, was targeted in a failed assassination attempt at
the end of the month. It seems most likely that both clerics were singled out
by militants for being too close to government and for preaching against
radicalism.
While attacks on police and clerics are unprecedented in Uzbekistan, they are
fairly standard practice in Pakistan and the North Caucasus. It seems
reasonable to predict that militants will use these tactics again in the
Central Asian context.
Yet in contrast to other parts of the world, they will find their room for
maneuver severely constrained in Central Asia. There are no places of refuge
where they can hide out and no stockpiles of arms, and the local population
will not supply them with food and intelligence information. The fact that the
armed group which tried to establish itself in Tajikistan was eventually
confronted and dispersed by government troops shows that there are limits to
such insurgent efforts.
Assuming that the militants will be unable to start operating deep inside
Central Asia, there is thus little chance that these states will become drawn
into the conflict with the Taliban and IMU in Afghanistan. It is therefore the
defensive lines on either side of the Afghan border that will be decisive.
The coalition members and the Central Asian states are aware of the dangers
posed by the Taliban relocating to northern Afghanistan. After security
services from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Germany and the Central Asian states
gathered in Dushanbe last month, they remained tight-lipped about the outcome,
but coping with the new challenge from the "northern Taliban" must have been at
the top of their agenda.
Sanobar Shermatova is a Moscow-based expert on Central Asian affairs and
sits on the RIA Novosti news agency's advisory council.
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